photo by: Nick Krug

Two-and-a-half-year-old Avery Marcum opens wide for a bite of barbecue as offered by her mother Megan Marcum during the People's Choice portion of the 18th-annual Lawrence Sertoma 48 BBQ Cookoff at Broken Arrow Park, Saturday, May 7, 2016. Lawrence residents and visitors alike dropped by the park to taste various meats prepared by BBQ competitors. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Sertoma-Schiefelbusch Communication Camp.

There was no pre-event fanfare or anything like a ceremonial first pitch, but Saturday’s Lawrence Sertoma Club’s 18th annual 48 BBQ Cookoff served as the season opener for many of the competing teams.

“It’s our opening day,” said Kevin Starkey, a Shawnee member of the Double Stack barbecue team. “We’ll go to six or seven more contests this year — about one a month.”

photo by: Nick Krug

Glynn Sheridan, with the Butts

The team of members from various cities in the Kansas City metropolitan area has been together for 10 years and was entering plates in all four categories contested at the 48 BBQ of pork, pork ribs, brisket and chicken. Just as opening day represents the first step to a hopeful playoff run for baseball teams, Double Stack team members said Saturday’s event and the other Kansas City Barbecue Society sanctioned contests they would attend in coming months would help them get ready for their ultimate year-end goal of October’s season-ending American Royal BBQ contest in Arrowhead Stadium.

“We’ve qualified for the American Royal the past seven years,” Starkey said. “We won in ribs in 2007.”

The cookoff Saturday at Broken Arrow Park was about shaking out the rust and getting back in competitive mode, Double Stack team members said as they prepared to turn in their brisket plate. It was a task they went about with a few cold beers to help reduce the edge of the warm early afternoon sun, they admitted.

“We’ll step it up a little more,” Starkey said. “We’ve been coming here about four or five years. We’ve done well here.”

A cold beer was on tap at the end of the day, too, for the Sertoma volunteers working the event, said Dee Bisel, the club’s public relations director for the contest. At about 1 p.m., as there was little time to think about that reward for a full day’s work, they waited on a long line of event visitors buying tickets to sample the offerings the 48 teams provided for the people’s choice awards.

The long line at what is the club’s only fundraiser was welcome, Bisel said. The day’s proceeds would again fund the annual Sertoma-Schiefelbusch Communication Camp. As the name implies, the camp is a collaborative effort of the club and the Schiefelbusch Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic of the KU Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders. This year’s camp will be from June 20 to July 1 at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

“In 18 years, we’ve raised $250,000,” Bisel said. “One-hundred percent of that went back to the Lawrence community. We’ll raise from $15,000 to $18,000 today. That will send a lot of kids with and without communication challenges to camp.”

Although the 48 BBQ contest was the season opener for the competing teams, it came near the end of the year for the KU speech, language and hearing department students assisting with the day’s events.

“That’s OK. We’re all so smart we don’t need to study for finals,” Shelby Snyder said about spending the day away from books as finals approached.

The first-graduate student in speech-language pathology from Olathe quickly got serious when praising the virtues of the communication camp for KU students and the children who attend.

“We get a lot of face-to-face time with the kids to help them with communication skills through a lot of fun activities,” she said. “It’s a great experience.”